


The Doors of the Penumbra

by Ernmark (M_Moonshade)



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: F/F, Gen, M/M, because you can't just hand me a multidimensional hub and expect me not to use it, branching out to include the various stories within the Penumbra Hotel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-09-20 14:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9495527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Moonshade/pseuds/Ernmark
Summary: The Concierge isn't the only one who can see the doors of the Penumbra Hotel. Sometimes other people see them, with... interesting results.





	1. A Door to Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of the writing prompts you see so much of in the Case Files.
> 
> lettucekitty asked me to "actually have Chance/Mary-Anne and Juno/Peter meet. Maybe the former two are on a weirdly underdeveloped planet that the latter two crashed on, or something like that - I'm not actually sure how to make that *work*. But it would be fun."
> 
> Fortunately, I happen to have a weakness for interdimensional doors.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juno and Peter meet Chance and Mary-Anne

It starts with a simple request. “Rita, I feel like shit. Can you bring me back a sandwich or something when you come back from lunch?”

Because he’s getting better about taking care of himself, dammit. Mostly because if he goes three days without eating again, Peter’s going to kill him. 

“Aw, boss. Do you want me to call you room service instead? It’ll get here faster.”

“That one of those food delivery apps? I told you not to waste your money on those, Rita. Their rates are highway robbery.”

“But it’s not even on the highway, boss,” she says. “You just poke your head out the door and kind of wave at the guy in the nice suit, and then you tell him what you want and he comes back a while later and brings it to you. No robbery or nothing.” 

That doesn’t sound right at all. Has she been harassing the neighbors for free food or something? “What, some guy is just waiting outside our door? Why didn’t you let him in?”

“Well, it’s not the office door. It’s the other one. The one you can only see sometimes.” 

Juno eyes her carefully. Rita’s thought processes have always been… unique… but she’s never crossed the line into delusional. “And can you show me this door right now?”

“Of course I can’t,” she says, annoyed. “If it was here right now, you woulda seen it already. I told you, it’s only here _sometimes_.”

* * *

Juno hasn’t even thought about that conversation in ages. If Rita was here right now, she’d be crowing triumphantly about how she told him so– but she’s out of town visiting her aunt, and Juno’s in the office, taking advantage of her absence with the company of a certain thief. 

At the moment Juno’s back is pressed against a wall, his knee hitched over Peter’s hip, and his head thrown back to give Peter better access to his throat. He’s mid-moan when something catches his eye. Something that wasn’t there yesterday.

“Juno?” Peter pulls back just enough to talk. “Juno, what is it?”

That’s the question, isn’t it? Because by all rights, that shouldn’t be there. Doors don’t just show up out of nowhere overnight. Not without somebody noticing. Especially not on load-bearing walls. But there it is, looking aged and slightly dusty, like it’s always been there.

He rights himself; the mood is long gone anyway. “Peter? Is it just me, or do you see that, too?”

“What do you–” he turns and stops. “Juno, has that door always been there?” 

“No. It hasn’t.”

It’s only here sometimes, Rita had said. 

Juno wouldn’t be a Private Eye if he let a mystery go unsolved in his own office, and so he creeps closer. The wood is the expensive type– real Earth oak, from the look of it, though it’s been re-varnished a few times to cover up the wear and tear of daily use. 

There are smudged fingerprints on the brass doorknobs– not anything he could get a usable print from, but still evidence in their own right. 

“Isn’t this mysterious,” Peter purrs into his ear. His clever hands are already at work, threading Juno’s arms through a holster, tucking a fully-charged laser inside, and then offering Juno a jacket. “Shall we investigate?” In Peter’s hand is a knife, turned off but at the ready.

The other side of the door is painted with a number, though it gives Juno a headache when he tries to identify what it is. J-something. 

Beyond it is a hallway that seems to stretch endlessly in both directions, lined with doors upon doors upon doors. 

But that doesn’t make sense. Juno knows for a fact that the next door on the left should lead to his office, and the one on the right should open into the main hallway of their building. Instead, both have their own blurry numbers, indicating they’re their own rooms. 

There’s a smell of burning wood as Peter clips the corner of Juno’s door with his knife, leaving scorch marks in the wake of the plasma blade. 

“I don’t know about you, but I’d like to be able to find our way back,” he explains.

They walk for close to an hour, passing hundreds of doors, before they finally agree: the hallway is endless, or close enough to it. Behind some of the doors they can hear sounds of a struggle, screams, gunshots, but nobody comes outside. Whatever conflicts are going on behind the doors, they never spill into the hallway.

“Any ideas?” Juno asks.

Peter shrugs with a faint smile. “Plate tectonics?” It’s their little inside joke: code for ‘I have no fucking idea, and it might be a few standard deviations from anything we think of as reality’. 

Juno mirrors his shrug. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” He takes a deep breath. “How about we stop and ask for directions?”

“Be my guest.” 

A moment later, he’s not just Peter’s guest. He grabs the nearest door and tests the knob. It’s unlocked, and he can already hear alarmed voices coming from the other side. 

He yanks it open, and finds himself staring down the barrel of a…

Well, he _assumes_ it’s a gun. Only it’s the kind of thing you only ever see in old-timey fantasy movies and Y2K faires, the kind that shot lead bullets instead of lasers. It’s definitely being held like a weapon, though, in the hands of a tall, handsome woman with skin like a Martian twilight. The hand not holding the gun is thrown back, shielding another woman– this one short,  pale but sunburnt, with long blonde hair that falls down to the small of her back.  

The armed woman speaks first, and her words feel weird in Juno’s head. He understands them even though he instinctively knows he shouldn’t; they’re not Martian, and the syllables sound all wrong when they hit his ears. By the time they reach his head, though, he knows exactly what she’s saying. That murderous expression doesn’t hurt translation, either.

“Who the hell are you, and where the hell did you come from?” 

“Do you mean this isn’t the way to the bathroom?” Peter asks cheerfully. “Oh, silly us. We’ll be on our way, then, ladies.” 

He’s trying to draw the woman’s attention away from Juno, and everyone in the room knows it. Instead of getting distracted, the tall woman pulls a second antique gun from her hip and points it between Peter’s eyes. “I believe I asked you a question.” 

“Oh, come now,” Peter says. “There’s no need for any of that. We haven’t threatened you in any way–” 

“You sure about that?” The tall woman’s gun migrates down to Juno’s chest. A slight nudge at his jacket reveals his laser, ready and waiting in his holster. “Mary-Anne? You mind getting that for me?” 

The paler woman hurries forward, snatching the laser out of Juno’s jacket.

“Chance?” she asks, holding it between her fingertips like it might bite her. “What is this?” 

The taller woman’s eyes narrow. “I’m sure these gentlemen would be tickled pink to explain it to you.” 

“It’s a Light Glock 477,” Juno says. “Regular old gun. Standard issue police grade–” Peter kicks his shin to shut him up, but it’s too late. Chance’s face has twisted into protective fury.

“You with the marshals?” she demands. Because _of course_ she’s a criminal. 

“Hardly,” Peter says before Juno can dig them in any deeper. “I’m afraid they’re not too pleased with us most days.” He keeps talking; he’s good at it, better at reading a room than Juno is, and slowly Chance’s attention drifts to focus on him. Meanwhile Juno reaches behind him. If he can get the door open, they can dive into the hallway, slam the door behind them, and disappear behind literally an infinite number of other doors before these two women can make it out after them.

There’s only one problem.

The wall behind them is made of wood, but not a solid plane of it– instead, it’s built up of uneven planks skillfully nailed together. There is no frame. No brass doorknob. No lock.

The doorway is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because this series was written in response to prompts, it's not entirely linear. So I don't actually have an answer to what happens next.  
> Do you?


	2. Loud Neighbors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juno and Peter meet Lily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> onegirlintheback asked:
> 
> "Rock, paper, sissors, to see who has talk to the neighbors upstairs about being to loud." Jupeter

They don’t hear the knocking at first. Not because they weren’t paying attention, but because it’s hard to focus on a single innocuous sound while fists are being introduced to faces and furniture is being smashed over skulls. 

It’s only after the fight, when they’re leaning against each other gasping for breath while the assembled Triad goons are sprawled across the floor at their feet, that Juno and Peter notice anything at all.

_Tap tap tap._

“Must be their backup.” Juno spits out the taste of blood. “Ready for another round?” 

“That question is usually so much more enjoyable,” Peter sighs, plucking at his torn shirt. “Ah, well. Would you like to get the door, or shall I?” 

“I’ve got it.” And Juno creeps close to the door, his laser already in hand to get off the first shot. But when he rips open the door, there’s nobody on the other side. “Huh. I guess they left?”

 _Tap tap tap._ The knock sounds again, just as clear as before. But it obviously didn’t come from _this_ door.

Juno peeks into the hall. Nobody there.

_Tap tap tap._

“Juno, I think it’s coming from… over here.” Peter moves cautiously toward the far wall, where there most definitely should not be a door, and yet there most definitely is. The architecture can’t possibly support a wall being there. It wouldn’t go to anything. It couldn’t.

But apparently, nobody told the door that.

“Peter, be careful,” Juno says. “You don’t know what’s on the other side of that thing.” 

_Tap tap tap._

“Clearly there’s only one way to find out, then, isn’t there?” Peter wraps his hand around the doorknob. “I do love a good mystery, don’t you?” 

Juno crosses the room in four long strides, but he doesn’t reach the door before Peter swings it wide open. On the other side is…

A girl. A tiny little thing, no more than ten, her hair done up into pigtails with things that look more than anything else like hard candy tied together with rubber bands.

Juno gapes. “What the h–”

“Hello there, little girl,” Peter says. One hand is on the door. The other is charmingly held behind his back, just inches from his knife. 

She worries her lip and digs at the floor with the toe of her light-up sneakers. “Um… hi. I’m Lily. From two rooms down.”

“And it’s a pleasure to meet you, Lily,” Peter says. Juno doesn’t even need to see his face to know that his smile is warm. The girl’s eyes stray to the body-strewn floor, but Peter instantly shifts to block her view.  “What brings you here today?” 

“Um… it’s just that my mom’s not feeling very well,” she mumbles. “And you guys were being real loud, so she can’t sleep. So I just wanted to ask if you guys could… um… be a little more quiet? Just for a little while? Only until she gets better, okay?” 

You have got to be kidding me, Juno wants to say. Oh, sure, we’ll keep it down. We’ll be nice and quiet the next time somebody tries to freakin’ kill us!

But one sharp glance from Peter cuts him off before he can say a word.

“Of course,” his thief says. “We’ll make sure to be on our best behavior. I do hope your mother feels better soon.” 

“Thank you, mister,” she says, and then turns back down the long hallway. “Um… I’m gonna go back home now, okay?”

“Of course. Off you go.” He leans out to watch her as she vanishes down the hall and behind one of the doors. The hall stretches endlessly in either direction, but the little girl doesn’t seem fazed by the impossibility of it.

Juno nudges one of the Triad goons with his toe. “You really shouldn’t be making promises you can’t keep.” 

“Oh, you’re one to talk,” Peter says good-naturedly. “I’m sure we can avoid too much of a ruckus for a few hours at least. Perhaps call in an anonymous tip while we’re out at dinner.”  

That’s one way to get rid of the bodies on his floor. “You hungry, then?”

“Fairly peckish. Shall we order a soup to go for the girl’s mother?”

Juno glances back at the door– or the space where the door had been. Now it’s nothing but empty wall. “Nah. I think the kid’s got it handled.” 


	3. A world full of green

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bittersweet-mojo asked:  
> For that multi-dimensional penumbra au do you think Juno an Peter are ever gonna get stuck in Arum/Damien's forest??

There was never any hope of them ignoring the door. Juno’s a detective, after all– he couldn’t leave a good mystery alone to save his life– and Peter’s too ridiculously curious to walk away from something like this. So the next time the door shows up, they step through without more than a shared glance.

The door opens out of something from one of Rita’s historical dramas. It’s set into a wall made of stacked stones held together with what looks like mortar– actual mortar– overlooking a collection of stone-and-wood houses thatched with straw and oversized leaves. It’s surreal… but somehow not as surreal as the view when they step into the open.

It’s so _green_.

He can see every leaf rustling in the humid breeze, can hear the calls of birds he can’t even begin to name, smell horses and flowers and grass and and people and it’s all real, isn’t it? Views like this are something out of a movie set, or out of one of those pretentious little greenhouses that they keep by museums to give kids an appreciation for things they’ll never see when all they have to look forward is desert and dust and _red_.

He must have started swaying, because Peter’s arm wraps around his shoulder to steady him. “It’s magnificent, isn’t it?”

“It–” With anyone else, he might shrug it off and say _it’s alright, I guess_ , but for once, he doesn’t have to. 

“Yeah,” he says. “It really is.”


	4. Laundry day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the mutlidimensional au for some reason i cant stop thinking abt juno and nuryev wandering into one of the rooms where that woman is like just doing laundry? And theyre all equally confused?

The room they enter is strangely huge, with large white boxes on every wall and stacked in rows across the floor. 

Peter wracks his mind. Most of his understanding of history is limited to the rich and powerful, and the magnificent works they commissioned in their own honor. This clearly has nothing to do with that.

“It… might be an old-fashioned server room,” he suggests. “Computers used to be quite large once.” 

But Juno’s shaking his head. “I think I know this one, actually.” He approaches one of the white boxes and lifts the panel on its topmost side. “This is a laundromat.” 

Peter doesn’t know what to do with that. “A what?”

“They usually have them at the Y2K faire. I’m pretty sure this is a washing machine. Which makes those over there–” He points to the other boxes, with the strange round portholes. “The driers. They’re for laundry.” 

Fascinating as this is, it’s hardly the most important detail Peter’s learned. “Do you attend those often?”

Juno flushes, suddenly remembering himself. “Rita likes ‘em,” he mutters. “And, you know, not much fun going alone.”

Peter smiles. “You’ll have to take me with you sometime.” 

Before he can properly express just how adorable he finds this whole situation, they’re interrupted by the sound of a sliding door. A woman steps through, a plastic basket balanced on her hip.

“Oh,” she says. “Hello!”

Peter glances over her shoulder at the darkened sky beyond the doors. “Good evening.” 

It isn’t much of a conversation, really. The woman seems intent on doing her… apparently her laundry, by the look of it, and Peter’s content to leave her to it. He’s far more interested in exploring the world outside. 

“Juno,” he says. “Shall we?”

“Uh huh. Just gimme a second.” Juno’s eye is fixed on the woman, who currently has her back turned to them in order to stuff her clothes into the box. He seems to realize he’s been staring a half moment after he realizes that Peter’s staring at him. “It’s just, in the demonstrations they always make this part look so fancy. They said people had to practice this so often that it was supposed to be elegant.”

The real thing doesn’t look particularly elegant. At some point in the process, the woman dropped a sock and a pair of panties on the floor. As she bends to pick them up, she glances over her shoulder to make sure nobody saw.

Peter and Juno avert their eyes, but not fast enough to escape notice.

The woman stuffs the last of her clothes into the box and slams a row of silver coins into the slot. She has to try twice before the coins vanish inside, and the machine starts rumbling.

“Can I help you?” she asks, a note of suspicion in her voice.

“No,” Juno says too quickly. 

But Peter steps forward. What’s the harm in asking? After all, they’ll never see this woman again.

“As a matter of fact,” he says. “We were having some trouble with these machines. How did you get yours to work?” 

The air of suspicion lingers for a moment more before it falls away. “Let me guess. Your washing machine broke?”

“Is it that obvious?” Peter asks with false sheepishness. 

“Tell you what,” she says. “I’ve got another couple loads in the car. Help me carry them in and I’ll walk you through it.”


	5. It's all a big misunderstanding, I swear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are lizards and language barriers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bittersweet-mojo asked:  
> Reading through the penumbra doors au again I realized how terrifying Juno/Peter's weapons could be to someone who hasn't seen a gun before. As well as a monster is to them. If they end up in second citadel again could we get an encounter where Arum is met with a Juno's stun-gun reflexes and everyone's ensuing panic? I adore your writing <3 <3

What they don’t tell you about a jungle is that it never stops moving. There’s always something in the underbrush, little monkeys swinging from the overhead vines, insects lighting on flowers, a wind you can’t even feel rustling the canopy and throwing flecks of light all over you. Everything’s moving, buzzing, squawking, chirping, crunching. 

Ninety percent of it is white noise, completely harmless, except for one thing: it distracts you from the ten percent that isn’t.

So maybe they’re on edge. Maybe more than a little bit.

And maybe they don’t take it well when a lizard steps out from behind what might be a kapok tree. It’s huge, towering over them both on strangely-jointed legs, flexing the wicked claws at the end of each of its four arms, and right now all Juno can think about are Cecil and his monstrous Cameramen, and the kinds of things he’d have them do in the name of good television.

The lizard rattles menacingly, its claws slicing into the bark of the tree like it’s made of sponge.

Peter pulls Juno behind him and draws his knife. The monster snarls and draws four knives of its own.

“Oh, come on,” Juno says. “That’s a bit excessive, don’t you think?”

But when the monster replies, it’s with a strange, rasping language that doesn’t sound anything like Martian. 

He leans closer to Peter. “Did you catch any of that?”

“I’m afraid not.” 

The monster’s frill rises as it snarls again, and suddenly it looks even bigger than before, like mechanical dragons spewing fire at hapless engineers, like a monster made of tentacles bearing down on Peter in an underground tomb, and his breath is coming too fast and his heart is beating too hard and Peter’s standing between him and the monster and _doesn’t he realize that it’s going to kill him?_

He’s not sure which one strikes first, but suddenly it’s Peter’s knife against the monster’s four. He’s fast, but it’s faster, it’s better armed, it’s bigger, it’s stronger–

But Juno’s the quicker draw.

One shot and the lizard crumples like a used tissue, stunned but still twitching.

There’s a shout behind them, underscored by the creak of wood and the strain of sinew. 

Behind them is a man in full armor, all wood and silk, with a bow in his hand and an arrow drawn all the way to his clenched teeth.

Juno can’t understand the words the knight is saying, but he recognizes the tone well enough to translate: _weapons down, hands in the air, you’re under arrest._

“Juno?” Peter whispers.

A bow and arrow– that’s a primitive weapon if Juno ever saw one. It can go a sluggish three hundred and thirty feet per second, while a laser clocks in at just under the speed of light. But at that speed, it really doesn’t matter, does it? The bow is drawn. Even if Juno shoots the knight now, that arrow is going to fly. And if it doesn’t hit him, there’s a solid chance it’ll hit Peter. 

That’s not a chance he’s willing to take. 

“Okay, okay. You don’t have to shoot. Let’s all calm down.” He sinks to his knees, putting the blaster on the ground with slow, telegraphed motions. “See? I’m unarmed.”

There’s a clank as Peter’s knife hits the ground.

“ _We’re_ unarmed,” Juno says. Unnecessarily, because the knight can’t actually understand him, and untruthfully, because he knows damn well that Peter’s got at least four other knives hidden on him, and Juno still hasn’t given up the habit of keeping a box cutter up his sleeve. 

Still, it’s a nice gesture. And maybe it even works. The knight steps closer, standing over them just past arm’s reach, and he kicks Peter’s knife away. He sets his foot on the blaster, apparently not confident enough to kick it without setting it off.

Smart guy.

“Rilla,” he calls over his shoulder without taking his eyes off them. A woman steps out from behind a tree, carefully scraping what looks like a handful of table salt off her palm and into a bag at her hip. Sparks fall from her hands as she rubs the last of it off and rushes to the giant lizard’s side.

And that’s when Juno notices the detail he overlooked before: the lizard is wearing clothes.

The woman must be a medical examiner or a doctor or something– she’s got that sharp, confident tone to her voice like she’s concerned and focused and  doesn’t have time for petty bullshit like people trying to kill each other all of ten feet away from her. That’s the good part. The less good part? Judging by her voice, she doesn’t actually understand what just happened to the lizard.

The knight locks eyes with Juno and asks a question that’s so harsh and cold that it can only really mean one thing: What the hell did you do?

“He’s stunned,” Juno says. “He’s just stunned. Give him like a half hour and he’ll be fine.” Which would be _so very helpful_ if the knight could _understand what he was saying_. “Look, I’ll prove it to you.” And he does… well, he does what you would expect Juno Steel to do.

He reaches for the blaster. He doesn’t even bother trying to get it out from under the knight’s foot, because he doesn’t have to.

That little jostle is all it takes to make it go off, and a stunning beam of hard light hits Juno straight in the chest.


End file.
